Dollhouse: Season 2, Episode 7 – Meet Jane Doe (2009)

Meet Jane Doe is focuses on Echo’s growth – Echo now is her own entity, not a doll mindless and obedient. Nor is she preserving her body for Caroline. Rather, she has evolved, an amalgamation of all her imprints, much like Alpha, thus giving her a new persona. What is exciting and interesting about this is that Echo is Echo, not Caroline, nor does Echo wish to return to being Caroline, continuing on the question of what makes up the soul – be it genetics or the summation of experiences or whatever. The fact that Echo as Echo has a sense of mortality and of preservation seems to suggest that the soul is separate from the body and is based on experience and reason (of the individual, be it sound or not) rather than being of a visceral nature. The episode uses a time lapse (3 months) to show the aftermath of Echo’s disappearance after the Perrin incident in D.C. Here, we find the characters in a much different place. Echo, Ballard and Boyd are plotting something, DeWitt is making a power play to regain control (are her motives sound?) and the future looks murkier than ever. The episode is another step to Epitaph One and we continue to see the pieces come together and fall into place. The visualization of the tension between Echo and Ballard and Echo being able to now access her imprints allows this portion of the episode to succeed. The viewer can feel the emotions and see the changes, which works so much better than the past use of extensive exposition. Back in the Dollhouse, the scenes involving the evolution of DeWitt’s relationship with Topher are quite interesting. As before, she seemed a little like a mother figure to him, both in the past and in the future show in the season one finale. But here she crosses him, and it will be engaging to see the ramifications of her actions. Each piece of the puzzle is coming into focus. Season two as is just getting better and better, and Meet Jane Doe is another great story on the path to finishing the puzzle (Epitaph One) and seeing what happens once it is done (Epitaph Two: The Return). 9/10

Dollhouse can be seen Fridays on Fox or on Amazon.com